,nevada, andiowa. so how does this model work? >> so every poll that people read about goes into the model and sees the projection in some way. >> reporter: there might be 30 or 40 of them a day in this year's poll-happy universe. silver's model averaging all those polls and then factors in how well they've performed in past elections and he comes up with probabilities like gambling odds. >> florida, for example, we had romney with a 60% chance of winning. that's how often when you have a one-point lead in the average of polls you've wound up winning in the past. in ohio we have obama with about a 75% chance of winning because he has a larger lead so it's more likely to be enduring on election day itself. >> i'm projecting that you need to win 99 games in order to make it to the post office. >> reporter: think money ball, the book and film about how a geek used numbers to outdo the oakland a's scouts using their intuition to find undervalued baseball players who could win. in other words, the stat-heads versus the pundits again. nate silver started out as a baseball statisti